Let's Just Lie Down
“…What?”
Kim Ji-eun blinked.
“Just… lie down?”
Kang Gi-tae let out a hollow laugh.
“Is this really the time for jokes?”
Lee Min-jae added in a sharp voice, and Kim Jin-woo too stared at Ji-hoon, his expression hardened.
“Yeah. So? Is that a problem?”
Amid all those stares, Ji-hoon was calmly chewing on jerky.
Chomp, chomp.
“First off.”
Once the jerky was gone, Ji-hoon asked a question.
“Let's look back at everything we've done so far.”
“…What did you say?”
Kang Gi-tae frowned.
“We smashed the wall.”
Ji-hoon raised a finger and pointed at the wall.
“And then the wall changed.”
That was true.
This maze wasn't actually a maze at all.
It was essentially a labyrinth — a gate that could only be cleared by solving its puzzle.
Ji-hoon folded his fingers down one by one.
“Break the wall, and the structure rearranges itself.”
“…”
“Move around, and the paths change.”
“…”
“And detection skills are basically useless.”
The group stared blankly at Ji-hoon's hand in silence.
They had wandered for hours and found no answers.
And the thing they'd been deliberately avoiding all this time —
the creeping fear that no amount of effort might ever be enough —
began to seep up from somewhere deep inside.
“E-even so, you're saying we should just give up like this?!”
“What are you talking about? I haven't said the word 'give up' once.”
Ji-hoon calmed down the agitated Kang Gi-tae.
“Don't tell me….”
Kim Ji-eun's eyes lit up as something clicked.
“It's not brute force — there's a trick to it!”
Ji-hoon raised a thumb toward her.
“Even the E-rank hunter's caught on, huh? And here's our C-rank reinforcement-type hunter?”
“Grrr….”
“So for now, we play. Doing ab-so-lutely nothing is the right move.”
Ji-hoon brushed off his hands and flopped down flat on the spot, as if he might fall asleep then and there.
Poppi and Choco flopped down along with him.
“Come on, everyone lie down, lie down. You're dead tired. Rest up.”
“Do you… honestly think that makes any sense right now?”
Kim Jin-woo asked quietly.
But it wasn't a voice of reproach.
“In the five years I've been active as a hunter, I've never seen a gate like this.”
“If I told you one existed in the dimension I came from — would you believe me?”
Hell. Hell Farm.
There, Abel used to get bored and play games with Ji-hoon and the farm's monsters all the time.
Who could escape the labyrinth fastest, who was best at solving puzzles — that kind of thing.
— Sometimes, doing absolutely nothing is the winning move, y'know?
When Ji-hoon followed Abel's advice, a hidden passage really did appear — and that was the first time he'd escaped a Hell Farm labyrinth in first place.
“It's not like we have any other options anyway, right?”
“Still….”
“Then let me ask the opposite.”
Ji-hoon slowly lifted his eyes.
“What would actually make things better?”
“…”
This time, truly, no one could answer.
No counterargument came, either.
Kang Gi-tae and Lee Min-jae clenched their fists and trembled.
Kim Ji-eun sat down to gather mana, trying to recover her water spirit's power.
And Kim Jin-woo leaned against the wall, arms crossed like a sentry keeping watch.
How much time passed like that?
“…Nothing's happening.”
Kang Gi-tae said, irritation thick in his voice.
At that very moment —
“…Hold on.”
Kim Jin-woo muttered.
“The mana is… moving…?”
The air inside the maze changed.
A light, following breeze began to blow.
Ji-hoon grinned and sat up.
The necklace made of griffin feathers trembled faintly.
“Called it.”
Then, a short while later —
Screeeeeech—
The wall began to slowly split apart.
“What the….”
“That crazy… it's actually real…?”
The wall really was opening.
Split left and right, the walls began lining themselves up in a single file.
CRUUMBLE! CRASH!
As if it had been that way from the very beginning.
The walls made the space where Ji-hoon's group stood the starting point, then —
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
forged a perfectly straight road straight ahead.
“…A path. There's a path.”
A real road.
A road stretched in a straight line all the way to the exit.
“Hah… hahaha…! We did it! We did it, I tell you!”
Kang Gi-tae pumped his fist and strode boldly forward —
and the wall moved again.
But this one looked far weaker.
It wasn't even half as thick as the walls from before.
Kang Gi-tae let out a contemptuous sneer and clenched his fist.
“A flimsy little wall like that is nothing now!”
“Hold it, Gi-tae.”
Ji-hoon yanked him back by the hem of his shirt.
“Argh, what now! What is it this time!”
“Just watch.”
Kang Gi-tae huffed and waited for a moment — and sure enough, the wall slid back into its original place.
“What in the world….”
“See? Wait patiently, and the answer comes to you.”
Ji-hoon smiled brightly, then turned to Kim Jin-woo.
“Team Leader?”
Meeting Ji-hoon's eyes, Kim Jin-woo spoke up.
“We proceed slowly, one person at a time. Do not break the walls, ever. We wait with patience. When the walls move — that's when you walk.”
Everyone nodded at Kim Jin-woo's command.
“Shit, who the hell makes a maze like this?”
“So it was a labyrinth disguised as a maze. Infuriating.”
grumbled Kang Gi-tae and Lee Min-jae.
“Th-thank you, Ji-hoon-ssi!”
bowed Kim Ji-eun, over and over.
“I owe you an apology for underestimating you just because you're F-rank.”
“No need. Honestly, I wouldn't trust an F-rank either.”
At those words, Kim Jin-woo started to say something, then stopped — and instead gave Ji-hoon a pat on the shoulder.
“You'd do well in any guild. Looking forward to the rest of this camp.”
All the teammates walked ahead of him.
Finally, Ji-hoon stretched with a long, satisfying groan.
“Yaaawn… shall we go too?”
And then, quite naturally —
all the way through the maze until they reached the exit —
“Hmm~ hmm-hmm~”
the F-rank hunter hummed a tune to himself, delighting in it, showing exactly what an F-rank looked like.
'Poppi kept a good eye out, right?'
All while deliberately ignoring the gazes fixed on his back.
Whoosh—
Stepping back through the exit portal returned them to the very orientation hall they'd left from.
The people seated there, waiting for Team C, looked up.
“Team C. You have passed last of the ten teams.”
Which meant they'd taken far too long.
Well, they had fumbled around quite a bit early on.
“Good work. Scoring results will be posted in five minutes, so please wait a moment.”
An announcement rang out summoning everyone back to the orientation hall, and those who'd cleared the gate earlier began trickling in one by one.
“Man, if it weren't for the dead weight, we'd have made at least the middle of the pack.”
“You came out way too late. Last place of all. Let's just hope we somehow avoid dead last on total score.”
Kang Gi-tae and Lee Min-jae muttered through gritted teeth.
Kim Ji-eun hung her head low, insisting it was all her fault.
“I'm sorry. I wasn't any help at all….”
Behind the sulking Kim Ji-eun, Kim Jin-woo stepped forward.
“I didn't do anything either. We'll do better on the next test.”
It was the picture of a team leader rallying his teammates.
At least he'd shown some sense of responsibility.
Hmm….
Ji-hoon decided he seemed like a decent guy.
“Right on time.”
Anyway, they had passed, hadn't they?
That was all that mattered.
Who cared about rankings.
“I will now announce second place.”
Everyone gathered there waited for their own team's name — sure that first place would obviously go to Team A, the one with Baek Kang-hyun.
“Second place goes to Team A. Congratulations.”
A murmur rippled through the hall.
“Why is Team A only second?”
“They came out first, didn't they? Why?”
“Could it be they relied too much on Hunter Baek Kang-hyun?”
“Nah, no way. Those are all people with real reputations in the hunter world….”
Baek Kang-hyun simply stood with his arms crossed, smiling faintly.
And then —
Wink—
The moment that gaze landed on Ji-hoon, goosebumps crawled all over his body.
'Please, just pretend you don't know me, you lunatic….'
Rumors spreading that he was close with an S-rank would do him zero favors.
While he was busy thinking that, the Administration Bureau supervisor took hold of the microphone again.
“And now — the long-awaited first place of this exam!”
Which team had beaten even Team A for first place?
All eyes in the hall converged.
“First place goes to — Team C, led by Hunter Kim Jin-woo! Congratulations!”
Silence—
Unlike the earlier commotion, a hush settled over the room for a long moment.
“Uh… first place, Team C. Hunter Kim Jin-woo? Where are you?”
“Ah, yes, right here… but really, Team C got first?”
“We were dead last, weren't we? Could the numbers have been misprinted?”
Kim Jin-woo and Kang Gi-tae urged them to double-check —
and then Baek Kang-hyun stepped up.
“Team C is indeed first place.”
Silence fell once more.
And then —
ROOOOAR—
“This is a rigged judgment!”
“That's right! He must have friends on the inside!”
“They came in last — how is that first place?!”
A hail of protests rained down.
Baek Kang-hyun looked out over the crowd, sighed, and raised his teal mana.
WHOOOOM—!
His mana blanketed the space and stilled the air itself.
“We will now disclose the scoring criteria. Supervisor, if you please.”
The Bureau supervisor, sweating cold under Baek Kang-hyun's pressure, nodded.
“First — Team A. They declared they'd leave everything to Hunter Baek Kang-hyun and gave up from the start. An irritated Hunter Baek Kang-hyun then collapsed the maze itself and escaped.”
Very Baek Kang-hyun.
So annoyed, he simply smashed the simulation to pieces.
“Next, Team B. Three reinforcement-type hunters smashed through the walls in sequence to escape.”
“Team D. Two supporters piled everything onto one swordsman, broke the wall, and escaped.”
“Teams E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and N — every single team, the same method. One person breaks a wall, the others physically hold the walls in place so they can't move, break another, hold, repeat — until they escape.”
The supervisor snapped the tablet's cover shut.
“Every team broke through the walls by force, carved out an exit that didn't exist, and escaped that way.”
“That's what a maze is, isn't it?! What's the problem?!”
“Exactly! What kind of maze is this supposed to be anyway?! It's a labyrinth!”
Undeterred by the continuing protests, the supervisor didn't budge an inch.
And then —
“Team C. Waited for the mana flow to settle before moving.”
BEEP—
The supervisor played the recorded footage of Team C's escape.
The very people who'd sneered, what could a last-place team possibly do, all fell silent.
“…That actually works?”
“Unbelievable….”
BEEP—
“This was an exam testing whether you could respond to gate variables realistically.”
“Go on, try breaking walls around an active gate. See what happens. It's nothing more than advertising your position to the boss monster — 'Here I am, right here!'”
At Baek Kang-hyun's follow-up words, everyone swallowed hard.
“Now then — the promised first-place bonus. The weakest link of Team C, Hunter Lee Ji-hoon?”
Baek Kang-hyun held out a single card to Ji-hoon.
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“A Black Card — unlimited use at every store inside the Administration Bureau.”
The gleaming Black Card.
Anyone could see it was a VIP card.
“Use it for a team dinner.”
“No, but why me of all people….”
“Because you're the hero of our first-place clear.”
And behind Ji-hoon, just as he was trying to argue back —
the supervisor played the footage.
–Let's lie down.
There was Ji-hoon, flopping flat on the ground without a shred of shame.
And so, that day, a legend was born within the Administration Bureau's Returnee Training Camp —
the legend of an F-rank hunter who was, as it turned out, a hidden master.
Right, so I'm a hidden master, am I….
“…Am NOT!”
“Ahahaha! Well, thanks to you, Ji-hoon-ssi, we get a team dinner. Sounds good to me. Cheers, everyone!”
Kang Gi-tae and Lee Min-jae had somehow glued themselves to Ji-hoon's side, and Kim Ji-eun chattered away excitedly about the test they'd just finished.
Kim Jin-woo, too, let his guard down and enjoyed the gathering.
“Whew, what a madhouse.”
Then, a couple of hours later —
Ji-hoon lightly tapped Poppi's feathers.
“Well? Anything to report?”
Whooosh—
Poppi, who had been cloaked in concealment, revealed himself.
“What kind of guy?”
Poppi's gaze turned toward the buildings belonging to the Bureau supervisors —
Toward the broadcast team building, where the man in charge of filming the exam footage was stationed.